Originally posted on Facebook - 2018-12-003-001 Romance, Reading and Real Life

I have always been a reader. As a child other than my own, there were the older siblings’ books, with each sibling liking a particular “type” of writing. Thus, there were westerns and spy novels from authors such as Louis L’Amour, Robert Ludlum and then there were Romance.

Romance came in all sizes and types. There were:

The slimline Mills & Boons, where every husband to be was a millionaire and he managed businesses and Harlequin which covered other romances, they may have been competing brands (and there were the “Red Covered” books which seemed to have replaced M&B’s).

Now most of the books were chaste and it was the idea of ‘’falling in love” which appealed to everyone.

Then there were the more innovative romance novels, where trips either on vacation or moves to other cities formed part of the background and guided the story. Very rare was it that the ladies did not move to the cities from the farms or the outback or vice versa. Food was never mentioned, except for:

A cook existing and dinner being the interaction between the rest of the home and the ‘lady” or

When the ladies were being invited to dinner on a date.

The glossy Kiss and Darling magazines were a competing text. They were laid out like Archie, Phantom and Brenda Starr of the newspaper’s comics section except that the pictures ran for pages and the photos were in colour. The ladies were always smiling and while there were mostly head shots with angles of “pert noses” or beautiful lips, the story was told. Thankfully whoever borrowed the magazines did not keep them for more than a few days or else there would have been a real temptation to linger.

In time, romance came with paranormal, vampires, the “undead”, ‘soldiers’ and some form of danger and there were authors not necessarily according to their type of book, such as: Iris Johansen, Kay Hooper, Jude Deveraux, Jayne Ann Krentz and her “alter writing name” and then there was Nora Roberts who managed to stay on top, evolving over the years from slimline to thicker books and trilogies and then her “alter writing name” who had a futuristic cop role with a techy husband who solved murders with each one contributing to the story.

One of her competitors was David Eddings with his Belgarion and other series where the romance was more gentle, less focused on romance but more on every day living. His books have stayed as re reads, along with most of Nora Roberts's books.